It seems like most people are expecting factories to open on 2/10 as planned. However, the expectation is being set that production will take two weeks to ramp back up to normal. And, there is some concern that larger companies will likely exert pressure to be at the front of the line.
Another problem at this point is movement into and out of China. The Chinese border with Hong Kong is only open at a few places and many are afraid to enter China right now for fear that they won’t be able to leave.
Everyone anticipates a big logistics clog once things start shipping, which will introduce delay and cost, although the magnitude of this is unknown.
Finally, the downstream (or upstream – I never get that right) impact of long lead time items will add another wrinkle once people understand the volume and timing constraints when things settle down.
So what’s the harm? If supplies were unlimited, there wouldn’t be any. But there are only so many face masks manufactured every year, and a lot of them are actually made in China. As Maryn McKenna writes here, China is choosing not to export as many of their masks and other personal protective equipment, because they need them at home.
At a press briefing today, the World Health Organization’s director-general noted that demand is up 100-fold for masks and related supplies, and prices are now up to 20 times higher than usual. Some of that is to be expected in an epidemic situation, but then he adds: “This situation has been exacerbated by widespread inappropriate use of [personal protective equipment such as masks] outside patient care.”
The Lost Art of Ambition: Debunking The 6 Lies Keeping You From Your Full Potential
We might slow down but life is going to keep trundling relentlessly onwards. The world will keep on changing, and sooner or later that change is going to come back to bite us. Whether it’s in our relationships, in our work, in our knowledge, or even just in our perspectives, we will be made obsolete if we’re just standing still.
Contentedness- true contentedness- is about making the most of what we do have, not convincing ourselves to be satisfied with the things we don’t. Trying to pretend that a lousy job, worse pay, and a nasty apartment are perfectly acceptable isn’t noble or commendable, it’s delusional. Never feel guilty about demanding more out of life.
Real danger comes not from wanting too much, but in asking for so little.
It is the end of an era with IBM’s announcement that CEO Virginia Rometty is retiring. Rometty assumed the role in 2012 and has been attempting to transform the company into a cloud and AI powerhouse. This transformation has been bumpy with IBM losing 22% value during her tenure.
But her acquisitions and steady hand may position IBM for a Microsoft-like resurgence (or she may have led the company to its final stand).
Acquisitions/Investments
LSI acquires S2P Solutions to solidify its SAP portfolio
The public services transformation company LSI announced today that it will acquire S2P Solutions Ariba Cloud-based business commerce business unit on February 3rd, pending shareholder approval. With the addition of S2P, LSI will continue its leadership in delivering full ERP Cloud solutions to Regulated Industries. The focus of S2P’s business is in procurement, spend management and supplier discovery, and it is considered a leading service provider for Ariba services.
“S2P is a champion in the procurement services market – and they have been instrumental in our strategy to deliver Ariba solutions to our SAP client base”, explained Steve Roach – CEO & President of LSI. “The ERP market is moving to the Cloud and SAP continues to lead the charge. By weaving Ariba (procurement), SuccessFactors (human resources) to the S/4H (digital core) together we are able to meet the needs of State, Local Government, Education, Utilities, Non-for-profits and Healthcare institutions. This acquisition is the next step in our journey to build out the Intelligent Public Enterprise”.
Microsoft Profit, Sales Beat as Cloud Demand Persists
Revenue in the period ended Dec. 31 rose 14% to $36.9 billion, marking the software maker’s 10th straight quarter of double-digit sales growth. Analysts on average had predicted $35.7 billion. Fiscal second-quarter profit was $11.6 billion, or $1.51 a share, Microsoft said Wednesday in a statement. That compared with the $1.32 per-share estimate of analysts polled by Bloomberg. Shares rose 4% in late trading.
Chief Executive Officer Satya Nadella has been trying to narrow the gap in cloud infrastructure with market leader Amazon.com Inc., in both technical capabilities and the caliber of customer it can attract for its Azure products and services. Microsoft’s recent wins include a massive contract with the Pentagon, for which it beat out front-runner Amazon, and a cloud deal with accounting giant KPMG LLP. Microsoft is also pulling in more revenue from Office 365, with companies such as KPMG and Ikea upgrading to the internet-based productivity software. Azure revenue in the recent period rose 62% and Office 365 sales to businesses increased 27%.
FCC: Wireless carriers violated federal law by selling location data
Back in 2018, it came to light that carriers sell their customers’ real-time location data to aggregators, which then resold it to other companies or even gave it away. Last year, a Motherboard report also revealed that bail bond companies and bounty hunters have been buying people’s location data for years, allowing them to use that information to track their targets.
All four major US carriers promised to stop selling customer location data to aggregators after the information first came out. The companies made good on their word, though it took them a year to do so: They informed FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel that they had already halted sales to aggregators after she requested for an update in 2019.
Hackers are selling card info stolen in last year’s Wawa breach
If you purchased anything at the East Coast gas station and convenience store chain Wawa between March and December last year, there’s a chance your credit and debit card info is being sold on the dark web. Earlier this week, fraud intelligence company Gemini Advisory discovered stolen payment card data being uploaded to Joker’s Stash, an online cybercrime marketplace. It seems the data was obtained during the Wawa breach discovered in December.
As you may remember, last month, Wawa revealed that malware had been swiping customers’ payment card info, possibly since March. It’s believed that 850 stores may have been hit, exposing 30 million sets of payment records, making it one of the largest payment breaches of all time. Cardholders in the US, several Asian countries, Europe and Latin America may have had their data stolen.
Antivirus company shuts down its data-harvesting arm after getting caught red-handed
The reports, which were the result of a joint investigation between Motherboard and PCMag, detailed how Avast was collecting user browsing data via its antivirus software. This data included Google searches, location lookups, visited URLs along with precise time stamps, and in some cases even specific searches made on porn websites. Although Avast claimed that individual users could not be identified from this data, Motherboard spoke to experts who said that this could be possible in some cases.
Jumpshot claimed to have data from as many as 100 million devices, and it listed some of the world’s largest companies among its clients, including Google, Yelp, Microsoft, and Pepsi. Jumpshot would package this data up into different products, one of which was its “All Click Feed,” which would allow its clients to see all user clicks on individual domains (such as Amazon.com). These clients reportedly paid millions of dollars for Jumpshot’s products, which often included precise browsing data.
IBM CEO Virginia Rometty, one of the most prominent female leaders in tech, is stepping down on April 6th, 2020. She will still serve as Executive Chairman of the Board through the end of the year, but she’s retiring completely after that. Rometty will be replaced as CEO by Arvind Krishna, who currently runs the company’s cloud business and who was a key figure in IBM’s Red Hat acquisition. She called Krishna “the right CEO for the next era at IBM.”
WeWork Names Veteran Real Estate Executive as New Chief
The naming of an experienced real estate executive is a clear indication that WeWork is moving on from Mr. Neumann’s strategy of building a sprawling company with lofty aims that included transforming how people work and live together. He had promoted WeWork as if it were a groundbreaking technology company set on upending its industry. The firm had also branched out well beyond office space, establishing sleek dormitories for working professionals and even a private school in Manhattan.
Apple is closing all mainland China stores due to coronavirus outbreak
The coronavirus outbreak is having a tangible impact on the tech world, and Apple is serving as a textbook example of its effect. The company is closing all its retail stores and corporate offices in mainland China through February 9th out of an “abundance of caution” and in consultation from experts. Apple had initially closed three stores, but this shuts down a full 42 locations across the country.
Key suppliers like Foxconn have said they don’t expect problems meeting production goals for companies like Apple. Caution is still the order of the day, however. Apple chief Tim Cook said that expectations for the start of the calendar year were unusually vague due to virus-related uncertainty. Sales at stores had dropped across China in recent days, even outside of the coronavirus epicenter of Wuhan.
U-Haul’s no-smokers hiring policy tests the boundaries of corporate wellness
Workers give up some measure of privacy when they’re on the job, given the relative ease by which their email, phone and browsing habits can be tracked. But companies are increasingly bumping up against privacy concerns as technological advances give them the ability to collect personal data on employees through their apps, for example, or to use artificial intelligence to scan applicants. Some argue screening out smokers and not, say, those who drink creates an unfair hiring dynamic. U-Haul’s policy also would weed out applicants who use e-cigarettes and nicotine patches, which many smokers use while trying to quit.
Data suggests such policies disproportionately affect those near the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Americans with low incomes, limited education and infrequent access to health care are at greater risk of developing smoking-related diseases.
How to tell a compelling story in a business setting
This might sound counterintuitive, but a compelling story needs to start at the end. In the crime drama television series Columbo, each episode always began with the murder. Peter Falk, the actor who plays the police detective lieutenant, always got to the dead body immediately.
In business, your “dead body” isn’t your data. You have to get to your issue and talk about what your data represents. In a status update—what does all this data mean? Are you doing well? Are you behind? Do you need to change? Should you keep going?
As New Coronavirus Spread, China’s Old Habits Delayed Fight
In those weeks, the authorities silenced doctors and others for raising red flags. They played down the dangers to the public, leaving the city’s 11 million residents unaware they should protect themselves. They closed a food market where the virus was believed to have started, but didn’t broadly curb the wildlife trade.
Their reluctance to go public, in part, played to political motivations as local officials prepared for their annual congresses in January. Even as cases climbed, officials declared repeatedly that there had likely been no more infections.
By not moving aggressively to warn the public and medical professionals, public health experts say, the Chinese government lost one of its best chances to keep the disease from becoming an epidemic.
UK won’t adopt new EU copyright law and the dreaded Article 13
The UK was one of the 19 nations who initially supported the new EU Copyright Directive, when the vote was cast last April. However, the Universities and Science Minister Chris Skidmore has now said it will not be implemented in the UK (via BBC).
He said: “The Government has committed not to extend the implementation period. Therefore, the United Kingdom will not be required to implement the Directive, and the Government has no plans to do so.
“Any future changes to the UK copyright framework will be considered as part of the usual domestic policy process.”
Away C.E.O. Is Back, Just Weeks After Stepping Down
“Frankly, we let some inaccurate reporting influence the timeline of a transition plan that we had,” Ms. Korey said in an interview last week. With some time and perspective, she said, the company’s board members decided to reverse themselves. “All of us said, ‘It’s not right.’”
The members of Away’s board say they feel as if they fell victim to management by Twitter mob.
The company now says it disputes The Verge’s reporting and has hired Elizabeth M. Locke, the lawyer who successfully brought a defamation case against Rolling Stone magazine for a story about a supposed gang rape at the University of Virginia. It is unclear whether Away plans to bring a lawsuit.
Burnout isn’t necessarily due to a heavy workload or long hours; hard workers can be happy workers in the right conditions. And occasional short-term burnout is normal for humans, a sign we need a break. But in the case of chronic, pervasive burnout, Beckstrand says, the primary cause is usually a “negative workplace culture” with deficiencies in six areas: purpose, opportunity, success, appreciation, well-being and connection. To combat employee burnout, says Beckstrand, employers should make a regular practice of acknowledging workers for their unique contributions as individuals, and helping them feel connected to a larger purpose.
But it’s not all on management to prevent burnout. Beckstrand recommends that workers take burnout as a sign to seek meaningful contact from supervisors and peers — not just to complain or vent, but to admit when they’re stuck, ask for input and seek a broader perspective on how their work supports the overall mission.
The changing nature of work is changing our workspaces too
But according to Macgadie, companies are becoming more sophisticated with how they think about that data. Rather than simply looking at real estate utilisation and the number of bodies that can be safely be squeezed into a certain square footage, they’re increasingly attempting to tie use of space to more tangible business outcomes and metrics.
“It’s becoming less about efficiency and more about effectiveness. It’s not about density, it’s about whether a space performing a certain task really well. If the output from that space can be quantified and is exceedingly high then that space is really effective,” Macgadie says.
Goodbye, Back Pain? This Office Chair Was Designed by a Trauma Surgeon
Kneeling chairs emerged in the late-70s, claiming to reduce lower back pain. A few years later, everyone was taking conference calls on exercise balls, the bobbing blobs said to build core strength and zap calories. Various wobbly stools touted similar benefits.
Then we heard sitting was problematic, so we stood. Contrary evidence emerged: One 2017 study, published in the American Journal of Epidemiology, followed more than 7,300 workers for 12 years and discovered those who stood for long periods had a twofold increase in heart disease risk.
When Dr. Turner Osler transitioned from the operating room to an office job where he sat 60 hours a week conducting biostatistics research, the trendy chairs he tried left him achy and unsatisfied. So he decided to adapt the best parts of each for his own design, an active stool dubbed the QOR360 (from $350, qor360.com).
Even though Google is under investigation for monopoly tactics, the company announced another acquisition. The search giant is set to purchase cloud sales company Pointy, which helps small companies sell their products online.
The company also announced a long-term strategy to kill browser cookies, with the aim to better protect end-user privacy (and likely unleash their own tracking-standard for advertisers).
Apple also announced an acquisition this week (AI startup Xnor.ai), but that news was overshadowed by the company’s refusal to unlock phones involved with the Pensacola shooting. Should tech companies intentionally open back doors for the government (even with the best of intentions) which could lead to much larger security issues?
Acquisitions/Investments
Google acquires Pointy, a startup to help brick-and-mortar retailers list products online, for $163M
The search giant is acquiring Pointy, a startup out of Dublin, Ireland, which has built hardware and software technology to help physical retailers — specifically those that might not already have an extensive e-commerce storefront detailing in-store inventory — get their products discoverable online without any extra work.
The companies are not disclosing the financial terms of the deal, but a source tells us it is €147 million ($163 million).
A source notes that this was a “good outcome” because Pointy has a “one of a kind” product that didn’t really have any comparables in the market. Pointy had also managed to pick up quite a lot of traction as a small startup, working with around 10% of all physical retailers in the U.S. in certain categories (pets and toys were two of those, I was told).
Equinix is acquiring bare metal cloud provider Packet
Sara Baack, chief product officer at Equinix, says bringing the two companies together will provide a diverse set of bare metal options for customers moving forward. “Our combined strengths will further empower companies to be everywhere they need to be, to interconnect everyone and integrate everything that matters to their business,” she said in a statement.
While the companies did not share the purchase price, they did hint that they would have more details on the transaction after it closes, which is expected in the first quarter this year.
Apple acquires Xnor.ai, edge AI spin-out from Paul Allen’s AI2, for price in $200M range
The three-year-old startup’s secret sauce has to do with AI on the edge — machine learning and image recognition tools that can be executed on low-power devices rather than relying on the cloud. “We’ve been able to scale AI out of the cloud to every device out there,” co-founder Ali Farhadi, who is the venture’s CXO (chief Xnor officer) as well as a UW professor, told GeekWire in 2018.
Xnor.ai also developed a self-service platform that made it possible for software developers, even those who aren’t skilled in AI, to drop AI-centric code and data libraries into device-centric apps.
Those two threads of innovation are woven into the startup’s motto: “AI Everywhere, for Everyone.”
Google Cloud gets a premium support plan with 15-minute response times
Google stresses that the team that will answer a company’s calls will consist of “content-aware experts” that know your application stack and architecture. As with similar premium plans from other vendors, enterprises will have a Technical Account manager who works through these issues with them. Companies with global operations can opt to have (and pay for) technical account managers available during business hours in multiple regions.
The idea here, however, is also to give GCP users more proactive support, which will soon include a site reliability engineering engagement, for example, that is meant to help customers “design a wrapper of supportability around the Google Cloud customer projects that have the highest sensitivity to downtime.” The Support team will also work with customers to get them ready for special events like Black Friday or other peak events in their industry. Over time, the company plans to add more features and additional support plans.
Apple Said It Is Helping In The Pensacola Shooting Investigation, But It Won’t Unlock The Shooter’s iPhones
“We reject the characterization that Apple has not provided substantive assistance in the Pensacola investigation. Our responses to their many requests since the attack have been timely, thorough and are ongoing,” the company said in a statement. “We responded to each request promptly, often within hours, sharing information with FBI offices in Jacksonville, Pensacola and New York. The queries resulted in many gigabytes of information that we turned over to investigators. In every instance, we responded with all of the information that we had.”
But Apple said nothing about actually unlocking the gunman’s two iPhones. Instead, it reiterated its stance on privacy.
“We have always maintained there is no such thing as a backdoor just for the good guys,” the company explained. “Backdoors can also be exploited by those who threaten our national security and the data security of our customers. … We feel strongly encryption is vital to protecting our country and our users’ data.
Google Says Chrome Will End Support for Third-Party Cookies That Track You. Here’s Why That’s Not All Good News
So, let’s look at the good news and the bad news. If you’re a user, there’s mostly good news, because ending third-party cookies is generally good for privacy. The caveat here is that it’s not yet entirely clear how Google plans to have it both ways. Meaning, it’s not clear how Google thinks it can provide a privacy-protected browsing experience that also provides targeted ads.
There’s also the fact that some less ethical advertisers will no doubt resort to other types of more nefarious tracking, like browser and device fingerprinting. Those technologies create a profile of you based on information sent by your browser about your device, the operating system, your location, and other unique identifiers. Safari has introduced protection against that, and it will be interesting if Google takes a similar approach with Chrome.
Mozilla lays off 70 as it waits for new products to generate revenue
In an internal memo, Mozilla chairwoman and interim CEO Mitchell Baker specifically mentions the slow rollout of the organization’s new revenue-generating products as the reason for why it needed to take this action. The overall number may still be higher, though, as Mozilla is still looking into how this decision will affect workers in the U.K. and France. In 2018, Mozilla Corporation (as opposed to the much smaller Mozilla Foundation) said it had about 1,000 employees worldwide.
Founded by Adam J. Goldstein and Reddit co-founder Steve “spez” Huffman, Hipmunk was one of the first well-made “metasearch” travel sites. It scrounged up flights (and hotels/car rentals/etc.) from across myriad services like Expedia, Priceline, etc., presenting all the times and prices in one big, skimmable interface.
Now the Hipmunk team says the website and app are both shutting down. Oh, and we’ve confirmed that Goldstein and Huffman tried to buy the company back from SAP Concur, but that doesn’t seem to have panned out.
Report: Intel CPU Supply Issues Will Likely Persist Through 2020
Intel has previously admitted to being stuck between a rock and a hard place and their CEO, Bob Swan, gave a very candid explanation for the situation they are in right now. It does, however, mean that AMD *will* be eating away more market share from Intel as OEMs and AIBs have to switch to AMD parts to maintain their volume as Intel’s foundries are running at peak capacity and cannot keep up with demand. Every chip order that Intel is not able to meet means market share gained by AMD.
It also doesn’t help that Intel’s chips ship at a premium (and it makes no sense to kill that premium right now when demand exceeds supply) and OEMs/AIBs have to pass that cost down to consumers who may prefer to go with AMD alternatives anyways. If there is one thing we know for sure it is that 2020 is going to be a make or break year for Intel and things won’t start looking up for the company till late 2021.
Silicon Valley Abandons the Culture That Made It the Envy of the World
Eric Schmidt, the former CEO of Google, said much the same last year. “Chinese companies are growing faster, they have higher valuations, and they have more users than their non-Chinese counterparts,” he said. “It’s very important to understand that there is a global competition around technology innovation, and China is a significant player and likely to remain so.”
This is a full reversal of the language that tech promoters used to sell Silicon Valley–style innovation and competitiveness for decades. Saxenian has noticed the change in how the Valley describes itself, or at least in how the dominant firms do. “Advocacy of the small, innovative firm and entrepreneurial ecosystem is giving way to more and more justifications for bigness (scale economics, competitive advantage, etc.),” Saxenian wrote to me in an email. “The big is beautiful line is coming especially from the large companies (Facebook, Google, Amazon, Apple) that are threatened by antitrust and need to justify their scale.”
This sort of talk prompts one obvious, knee-jerk response: It’s simply hypocrisy. When Google and Facebook were start-ups, their executives said start-ups were good. Now that Google and Facebook are huge, their executives say huge companies are good. It’s cynical, if not unexpected.
